Question

Any chance you will add median as an additional SDA summary statistic?

The SDA version on the UC Berkeley website allows computation of medians in addition to means (at least the version used for SCF data). IPUMS-CPS' SDA program looks very similar to Berkeley's--I gather it's an earlier version--but does not allow users the median option. I have access to Stata so can estimate medians myself, but this would save time and be useful to people who depend on online data analysis. I noticed that several people have asked about medians in the past, but it was assumed they would download the microdata and do it themselves.

Staff Answer

It is possible to calculate medians using the Online Data Analysis System by checking the "Summary statistics" option on the "Frequencies/Crosstabulation" screen; however, there are two exceptions where this is not possible. First, you cannot include a Column variable. Instead, you would need to enter this variable as a Control variable to create separate tables for each value of your desired Column variable. Second, it is not possible for the online analysis tool to generate the median if the number of cells exceeds the limit (see this previous answer for a solution).

User Forum

The User Forum allows users to seek more information about our data tools by submitting questions for IPUMS staff or fellow users to answer, or by searching the answer base for previous questions and answers.